92yrs of railway budget to end next year
There will most likely be a complete makeover in the way the budget would be presented in the next financial year. There will be no separate railway budget from next financial year, putting an end to a practice that started in 1924, with the finance ministry agreeing to the proposal to merge the transporter's annual exercise with the general budget. The railway minister is also looking to boost the railways as well. Besides the acceleration in capital investments, which the presentation shows have grown from an average of Rs 45,979 crore during 2009-14 to Rs 58,718 crore in FY15 and Rs 93,795 crore in FY16, with the projected Rs 1,21,000 crore in FY17 the plan to push non-fare revenues in a big way seems to be getting a lot of attention and the results of which is expected to start accruing soon. To double the non-fare revenues from last year to Rs 9,600 crore estimated in the budget this year, there is an impressive line-up of the steps to do it.
The move to discard the British-era practice of a separate rail budget by the Modi government comes after a two-member committee comprising Niti Aayog member Bibek Debroy and Kishore Desai recommended the exercise be scrapped. Prabhu had told Rajya Sabha on Tuesday that he has asked finance minister Arun Jaitley to merge the railway budget with general budget in long-term interest of national transporter as well as the country's economy. The minister, however, was non-committal about the timeline for the merger. The social media, especially twitter based complaint redressal system is a hit with the public too. The average response time by the Rail officials is less than 30 minutes to the complaints.